John Popielaski
Nostalgia After a Text from Steve About His Daughter Dining With My Niece at Buffalo Wild Wings
In less regulated times, I sat inside
a ’77 Blazer parked behind
the strip-mall stores whose backs
were turned to Norwood Avenue
and talked with Steve about
how alien intelligence
would telepathically guffaw
if it came down and saw
that we were still a species
that communicated telephone
pole to telephone pole
with one another from afar.
We smoked a little more
and looked up at the full moon
and the dim stars so far
from the sagging wires
that we had no words and were
as comfortable with silence
as we were with conversation.
But staring out a windshield
at a sliver of the universe
for an extended period
of Earth time is bound
to fill one’s humbled brain
with words that beg to be incanted.
Before he flicked the lighter,
Steve intoned it was
presumptuous to think
that humans in the scheme
of things had any lasting
impact on the Earth.
This was almost thirty years
before we ultimately developed
opposite political affiliations,
so I didn’t say that his was one way
of perceiving the dilemma.
All I said as I exhaled
and squinted was
can you imagine
if a fireball like the one
that hit Tunguska near the turn
of the century that we still live in
lit the sky up right now.
That would be fucking awesome,
Steve mused, and we waited
in the smoke like sorcerers whose way
with words had jinxed Long Island.
Other work by John Popielaski